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The Voice Of Veterans

Well, it’s a new year. Welcome to 2015. This is the year we were supposed to have flying cars and hover boards. Color me disappointed.

However, what 2015 HAS given us is a voice. I say this because I just saw American Sniper yesterday. I’m not going to get into Chris Kyle as a man. I never had the privilege of knowing him. I have a few friends that operated with him, and had nothing but great things to say about him. I’m not going to sit and bitch about any Hollywood inconstancies that arise when flash and pomp take precedence over authenticity.

I am, however, going to talk about the precedence this film set for veterans and the direction I’m hoping the population of this country will take.

American Sniper, though being marketed as a hero movie, goes far beyond that. It isn’t an action movie. Yes, there IS action in the film; but it’s not the sole focus. I can see a lot of people leaving the movie disappointed because there wasn’t as much running and gunning as in say, Act of Valor or Lone Survivor.

What the movie accomplishes, for me and for US is that it finally depicts WHY coming home is the hardest part for most of us. So many movies in Hollywood either touch briefly on the subject, but miss the mark. The Hurt Locker, love it or hate it, has a very poignant scene in the grocery store where Renner’s character has returned from a tour in Iraq and life seems mundane and boring compared to the excitement and rush of defusing bombs. The premise is botched in that, most veteran’s aren’t missing the experience because they’re bored and need an adrenaline rush; they miss their brothers and that bond that frankly WILL NEVER be experienced here at home. THAT is the drug for which most of us are fiending.